630 Book reviews

How Conversation Works will reward careful and tolerant readers with a fairly complete overview of conversation studies. Its two main flaws are firstly that it does not distinguish between the empirical and theoretical traditions in the field of coinversation studies and secondly that it blends description and prescription thout alerting the reader to this combination of tra distinct approaches. The general reader will find much of value in How Conversation Works as long as he or she recognizes and accepts its li

re

Brown, I? and Levinson, S. C., iF78. ‘Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena’. In: E. Goody, ed., Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interaction. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. pp. 56-3 1C.

Ervin-Tripp, j., 1976. Is Sybil there? The structure of some American English di Language in society 5 : 25-66.

rLevinson, S.C., 1 O5 903. Biagiriatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

y, Explorations in Japanese sociolinguistics. ( Beyond, VII: 1). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1986. xi+ 153 pp. Dfl.90.00/ $36.99.

eviewed by Fred& ULFNIEL

This volume contains four chapters dealing with different aspects sociolinguistics. Some of the material has previously appeared articles in various journals and books.

with special reference prehensive survey of the field

of Japanese as separate

to estem of Japanese

sociolinguistics. In fact, cllcl -L +h- 0 >tents of this chapter may already be known to regular readers of this journal, since it first appeared (in an almost identical version) as part of the special issue on ‘Japanese sociolinguistics’ in 1986.

The author notes that Japanese sociolinguistics by and large is a new field estem researchers, who often choose novel approaches and offer d

ent insights than their Japanese colleagues, the latter tending to foGus he on data and statist’ ng the established and other hand, those do take an interest in theory generally alize in European languages, particularly

nglish, rather than study their own language.

* Corresponi,nce address: F. Ulfhielm, Abe Akademi, Depxti-uent of Business .&iministration, SF-20500 Abe, Finland, and: The Royal Institute of $chnology, School of Control and Maintenance Engineering, S-l 16 35 Stockholm, Sweden.

Book revikws 631

A fascinating aspect of the Japanese language, as the author lucidly demonstrates, is the extremely rich linguistic encoding of social orgadtion - by means of referent and addressee honorifics (verba honotics), terms of reference and address (pronouns, kin/role terms, a suffixes), as well as through a set of donatory verbs (a more extensive atment of the latter

later on in the book, in chapter 3). Various identity markers er, and group identity) also help communicate essential

iscussing language attitudes in Japan, the author also touches on the e ethnocentric notions propagated by certain Japanese scholars

ng the purported untranslatability of Japanese and its unlearnability as its alleged spiritual power. This is in enomenon, in view of the tremendous lan ge: Almost half of the Japanese lexicon is

made up of loans from Chinese? whereas the native Japanese vocabulary amounts to significantly 12s~; English is another, more recent, source of massive borrowing.

The author also notes that, rather than simplifying the task of read and write Japanese, language planning in Japan has resulted both in the number of (Chinese-derived) characters for basic school education and for general everyday use, as well as the number of approved readings for these characters.

Chapter 2, ‘The ethno of ritual and address at a Japanese wedding reception’ (23 pp.), is an ting case study demonstrating that an analysis

he linguistic organization of a social ritual event may reveal a far richer ric of social pu se than that overtly indicated by the ceremony itself. n the basis o n examination of the forms of address and reference

during the marriage reception, the author that, rather than nding on static or indexical as systems, certain

aspects of linguistic form and behaviour explained by them as 4rodticts of an ongoing process of !in ic encoding 0 concepts: “the speakerr dynamically adapt design ry markers to create and suit a social reality” (p. 50).

The author suggests that a working sociohnguistic concept of ritual is very rAuch required. This should treat ritual not just as conventionahxed linguistic behaviour but regard it as meanin 1 communiative khaiour, “constitw-

ting a collective meta-co vent” (p. 39, and thus take due notice of the sociocultural context of language.

Chapter 3, ‘Speaking of giving: The pragmatics of Japanese donatory verbs’ (22 pp.), is a more theoretical discussion. It sets out to demonstrate the inadequacy of applying a purely structuralist and transformationalist approach when analyzing certain Japanese lexicai and morphological items relating to the English sememe give, since the choice among the several forms

632 Book reviews

available depends on the interpersonal relations (i.e. status and group affilia- tion) perceived to hold between the various persons directly or indirectly involved in the transaction.

Detecting severe shortcomings in purely syntactic and semantic frame- works, which are unable to handle contextual relativity or deixis, the author also expresses reservation about certain areas of pragmatics characterized by “the mere welding of a communication-oriented, logico-philosophical analysis onto an essentially structuralist base” (p. 78). If there is no neat dichotomy between cultural and linguistic knowledge, then what is needed, the author suggests, is a new integrative approach: “we must construct a framework capable of handling a speaker’s perception of his identity and the identity of those he is talking to and about” (p. 69), and “develop a socio-psychologically based grammar” (p. 78).

Chapter 4, ‘Cross-cultural contrasts’ (39 pp.), finally, focusses on the semi- nal area of contrasts in linguistic behaviour and the potential conflict arising out of differences in communication patterns across cultures. It is divided into two parts, the first of which reports on a contrastive study of the pitch correlates of politeness, while the second part deals with the process of cross- cultural miscoding in Japanese-Western interaction.

The first part, an investigation of contrasts in the linguistic behaviour of English and Japanese speakers, focusses on pitch, politeness, and sexual role. It represents something of a novel sociolinguistic approach, since, as the author notes, until recently pitch phenomena have not received much linguis- tic attention, and there is so far “no developed semantic theory of intonation nor an explanation of how it cofunctions with syntax, nor any detailed study of its sociolinguistic correlates” (p. 82).

The author shows that Japanese speakers, compared to English, exhibit tional differences in the expression of politeness

formulae, and he proffers the hypothesis that “high pitch level is employed far distinctly different sociosemiotic functions in the two language communities” (P* 96)*

In the second part, a discussion of cross-cultural miscoding, the author’s main emphasis is on a semiotic and sociolinguistic approach. on various other schools and fields, such as social psychology, the ethno- graphy of speaking, discourse and text analysis, as well as applied linguistics. This kind of integrative approach is probably where linguistics has most to offer other disciplines, such as organization research and international marketing, where cross-cultural issues are beginning to attract serious atten- tion.

The author views communication as constituted by two simultaneous but separate systems, the one symbolizing and the other organizing. Meaning is seen as dynamic, being contextually defined and mutually negotiated. He presents a model of “semiotic schism” (p. 96ff.), to explain the process of

Book reviews 633

cross-cultural miscoding: Since each interactant automatically interprets the other’s communicative signs and rhetoric patterns against the background of a culture-specific system of beliefs and values, the process might easily lead astray, resulting in frustration or even communication breakdown. One of the main problems, then, is that the interactants are generally not consciously aware of the potential danger of miscoding, even though they may be acutely aware of each other3 different cultural backgrounds: They easily make the mistake of reading their interlocutors’ communicative signs as if these carried the same meaning as in their own culture. This tends to entrench negative stereotyping on both sides. The author, in fact, suggests that “The tragedy of semiotic schism is that mere convention and not content should persistently disturb and, on occasions, rupture the already delicate enterprise of cross- cultural communication” (p. 117).

By necessity, considering the immense scope of the theme and the multiple avenues of the l3ppiOdi adopted, this part of the book is somewhat more speculative, a fact, however, which in no way detracts from its interest and importance.

Concluding impressions: At first sight, the four chapters, diverse in both content and approach, may seem rather loosely related to each other, united only by the author’s expressed theme of the book: ‘“the interrelation of the Japanese language with its sociocultural setting and context: Japanese socio- linguistics” (p. vii). What, then, ties them together, apart from the broadly defined theme of ‘Japanese sociolinguistics’?

What emerges, in fact, after reading the book through a couple of times, is an increased awareness of the extremely high contextuality of spoken Japa- nese;a deepened conviction that merely analyzing Japanese language p tion according to a purely structuralist or transformationist ap bound to fail utterly; that the reality of the social situation involved has to be taken into consideration; that spoken language in Japan is always inextricably embedded within a social context, and that this context has a decisive influence on the interpretation of an utterance. Thus, the author’s belief, stated in the foreword, that “sociolinguistics must adopt various disciplinary pproaches in order to adequately analyze the multiple facets of real commu-

nication” (p. vii) appears to be a very sensible dictum. In fact, the author’s choice of approaching the field of Japanese sociolinguistics from several different angles makes the book all the more ustftil, since it hints at the considerable complexity of this rapidly emerging area of study.

Even beyond the fertile contributions to the field of Japanese sociolinguis- tics proper, however, there is another, equally important, aspect of the book: The mere fact that Japanese is a non-Indo-European language and that Japan is a non-Western culture might offer important data for constrastive purposes, as well as for a wider and more generally applicable theory construction. This aspect, in fact, is also emphasized by the author: “the aim of much of the

634 Book reviews

research presented here has not been primarily to explicate Japanese language behaviour so much as to exploit Japanese data to investigate or support a certain issue of wider, general significance” (p. vii).

part from chapter 1 and the last part of chapter 4, the book is rather technical, but it should offer little difficulty to the trained linguist. No knowledge of Japanese is presupposed, and the text should be equally accessible and stimulating for linguists outside the folds of Japanese sociolin- guistics proper.

To conclude, I find this a very stimulating and useful book.

and From axiom to liialogue: A philosophical study of logics and argumentation. erlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1982. xl+ 337 pp.

ALTON

From Axiom to Dialowe is the first major work in logic to reverse the centuries-old tradition of restricting the scope of formal logic to the semantic domain of propositions, truth-values, quantifiers, etc. This book ushers in a new era of formal pragmatic structures of argumentation suited to the normative and critical work of evaluating the logical thinking that takes place when two participants in argumentative dialogue ‘reason together’ in conver- sation. This work, beta se of its precision and comprehensiveness, is a major step, and ought to be carefully studied by anyone working in the areas of argumentation, informal logic, discourse analysis, artificial intelligence, speech communication, rhetoric, and pragmatics of dialogue..

Since its appearance in 1982 however, From Axiom to Dialogue has not attention it deserves. A similar fate befell

g work, Falhcies (1970) - a book of fun- damental importance for argume tion that only recently is gaining the wider recognition that it deserves. 0th of these books are highly technical, strikingly innovative, and upset long-established traditions on theoretical subjects that are fundamental to the logic curriculum.

It is curious that logic has been so slow, in recent times, to seriously address the subject of dialogue-oriented reasoning, given the potentially great interests at stake. From Axiom to Dialogue goes a long way towards offsetting this unfortunately neglectful trend, opening up the field of dialogue for serious investigations.

* Correspondence address: Winnipeg R3B 2E9, Canada.

D.N. Walton, Department of Philosophy, University of Winnipeg,